baldur's gate style portraits tutorial

Mrazomor

so im new here, as you can probably see, but i've stumbled across this forum multiple times while browsing for nice baldur's gate style portraits. im a fan of the game, obviously, and have beaten it many many times normally, and quite a few times completed some challenges (single character on impossible, single character on impossible without items, no reloading, no reloading no resurrection, etc).
here's the thing, i really like the style of the portraits in baldur's gate (opposed to icewind dale portraits, they are good, but i like baldur's better), and i would like to learn how to make them (if possible). i understand that basically they are made by picking a portrait of someone, get some armor, hair, weapon (maybe) and slap it all together, smudge it a bit with some filters, add some scars maybe and magically you would get a cool baldur's gate style portrait. but im not that good at photoshop, and i have only ever tried once to make something similar (as a joke) and i feel like i would be able to do it if i found a good tutorial for it.
so what im asking is: do any of you guys and girls know of a good tutorial on making baldur's gate style portraits, or even any photoshop tutorial that can help me accomplish something similar at least?

Mrazomor

here's the portrait i did, i know its sucky but i mostly did it as a joke for my friend (as i used him as a model), ofc, the volcano and red hue was added by his request to add a 'dynamic background'.

lunar

There was detailed instructions for the photoshop to convert pictures into bg style portraits. Step by step tutorials, even. Have you tried googling it, I remember coming upon it a few years back.

I myself use gimp and first use some blurring, and then enhancing with different sharpen options, play with contrast and hue, crop it and paste on a cool background etc. Add some light effects here and there. Nothing real pro but good enough results for me.

Some pictures are better suited for this, the picture quality must be very high and the face should have indirect lightning, to have many shadowy areas as to simulate bg portrait style. A very bright direct face shot is bad for baldurisation. A dramatic shot with some shadow and light play is better.